Archive for March, 2015

Another Dynamics Ax project begins for Synergy Software Systems with a well known and rapidly expanding GCC retail group.

Synergy will introduce the new Dynamics Ax WMS processes and mobility solution to streamline operations. This implementation will also feature the Synergy Software Systems localised HR and Payroll solution for the GCC. Reasons for selecting Synergy Software Systems include the depth and breadth of consulting experience, and an exceptional Dynamics Ax team, all based locally to provide the unequalled support for which we are known.

Robert Krulwich said “What Cezanne did for apples, Rob Whitworth does for city traffic” – and we have to agree. Take a look at his latest incredible video, and enjoy a look at Dubai, as you’ve never seen it before…

From the world’s tallest skyscraper – Dubai’s beloved Burj Khalifa, to the luxurious first class cabins onboard Emirates Airlines, ‘flow motion’ pioneer Rob Whitworth has debuted an astounding new video of the UAE city, as you’ve never seen it before…

Watch as Whitworth compiles three months of exploration in Dubai into a three-minute long video wonder – noting “my lasting impression is of the eternal wonder of the desert and the importance it holds for the Emirati people.”

Microsoft has revealed its Cloud Platform roadmap site, with the resource providing a view of the improvements and developments across the Cloud Platform business. The roadmap spans cloud services like:
- Microsft Azure, Intune, Power BI, and Visual Studio Online,
- and server offerings such as: Windows Server, System Center, SQL Server and Visual Studio.
- and Converged system appliances are also displayed, such as Cloud Platform System, Analytics Platform System and StorSimple.

Microsoft intend that this site will ensure a comprehensive and open view of the company’s current roadmap; where they are focusing on and what technology is currently in development or coming out within the next few months.

Takeshi Numoto, corporate vice president of the Cloud and Enterprise Marketing Group at Microsoft, wrote in a blog: “With this view, you will be able to understand and plan for what’s coming next. In addition, you will be able to easily view newly available products and services, including those in public preview, to help you take full advantage of our expanding portfolio. ..”We believe this site is an important step on that journey. As the site grows and matures, we’ll look forward to your feedback on what is working and where we can improve, to ensure this resource is a valuable asset for your business.”

Microsoft clearly wants its Azure cloud platform to be the default place for organizations to run their workloads. In an ideal Microsoft world all those workloads would also be built upon proprietary Microsoft MSFT technologies so Redmond is keen to make Azure as palatable for non Windows workloads as it is for Windows ones.

This week sees the Strata + Hadoop conferenceis taking place, and its the home of open source big data discussions, Microsoft will further embrace other technologies. The company announced today that it is launching a preview of its Hadoop-based cloud tool that runs on Linux. At the same time it is making its existing Azure ML service, a machine-learning tool-set, more widely applicable with support for Python. This is in addition to the already-announced support for the R language. Readers will recall that just last month Microsoft acquired Revolution Analytics, the company behind the open source R language.

Microsoft is also going to make Storm, an open source stream analytics tool, available for the HDInsight platform with support for .NET and Java. This is in addition to the existing Azure Stream Analytics offering that the company plans to continue to sell. It is also looking at deal with data integration vendor Informatica. to join the Azure Marketplace so that that means is that the Informatica Cloud agent is available in Linux and Windows virtual machines on Azure. That will enable enterprise customers to create data pipelines from both on-premises systems, and the cloud, to Azure data services such as Azure HDInsight, Azure Machine Learning, Azure Data Factory and others, for management and analysis.

“Our goal is to make big data technology simpler and more accessible to the greatest number of people possible: big data pros, data scientists and app developers, but also everyday businesspeople and IT managers. Azure is at the center of our strategy, offering customers scale, simplicity and great economics. And we’re embracing open technologies, so people can use the tools, languages and platforms of their choice to pull the maximum value from their data.

Microsoft is in a direct race with Amazon Web Services to win the battle of the cloud vendors. Opening up to all these other solutions adds yet another value proposition for customers looking to decide between Azure and AWS.

“Amazon Web Services leads the infrastructure as a service pack, but Microsoft’s Azure is closing; there’s a lot of room for apps to move to the cloud; and more enterprises are going with hybrid approaches, according to RightScale’s annual survey of cloud adoption. RightScale’s survey of infrastructure as a service usage covered 930 respondents with 306 enterprises with 1,000 employees or more. Of the respondents, 24 percent were RightScale users. Of the companies surveyed, 45 percent had 1 to 100 employees with the remainder 100 workers or above. By region, 62 percent of respondents were from North America, 18 percent from Europe and 12 percent from Asia. The remainder was in other regions. (ZDNet 02.18.2015)”
“More than half of all public cloud deployments use Amazon Web Services (AWS), but Microsoft Azure is gaining ground. According to an annual survey of 930 IT professionals, conducted by cloud management specialist RightScale, 57% of SMEs and large enterprises use AWS public cloud, compared with 54% in the same study last year. (Computer Weekly 02.20.2015)”
Research conducted by Tata Communications, a leading provider of A New World of Communications™, has found that organisations with 500+ employees are seeing tangible benefits from cloud computing. 85% say cloud had lived up to industry hype, with 23% declaring that cloud had exceeded their expectations. According to the global survey, this groundswell of positive opinion has been contributed to by enterprises experiencing tangible benefits when using cloud services – with 83% of enterprises feeling they have experienced benefits they did not expect to see. The most popular of these benefits cited by respondents were: increased productivity (69%), better access to data (65%), and reductions in costs (63%). (BusinessWire 02.26.2015)

This video explains what this next generation solution can do for your highway cross sections. Watch the 18 minute video to understand the advanced technology that created to support the projects you are executing today.

Realise huge savings amounts on salaries, time and money on your projects by streamlining basic AutoCAD operations. The program uses our AutoCAD custom tools to make your submissions easier, more accurate and faster than any other applications in the market today.
An average production output per user can be as high as 1,000 cross-sections a day with all those details being demanded by your consultants.

The greatest advantage however comes from reducing the idle costs of project
resources and ensuring their deployment is viable and profitable.

Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services latest release includes a reworked experience for managing projects. and is now the primary interface for all users..

New features
In the cloud hosted environments:
◦ Developer topologies to jump start AX solution development in Azure.
◦ Service accounts can be customized.
◦ Names of virtual machines can be customized.
◦ All topologies default to D-series virtual machines.

• Business process modeler enable import of library content by drag and drop.
• A new Environments section is added to the dashboard to better manage deployed AX systems.
• New roles separate out environment management, and to perform operational tasks:
- Environment manager - members of this role have access to all tools in Lifecycle Services and can manage cloud-hosted environments.
◦ Operations user - members of this role have access to the following tools in Lifecycle Services:
– system diagnostics;
– issue search;
– cloud-powered support;
- updates, and to manage cloud-hosted environments.

On March 23rd, Microsoft will remove document tracking and project planning from the site and replace it with SharePoint integration. So for all of the projects for which you’ve used document links, ensure that you make an offline copy of the document list before March 23rd.

Project plans are replaced by Project methodology.
Project plans, phases, summaries, and advanced user role management will be removed around March 23rd.
So for all your projects be sure to make an offline copy of any project artifacts before March 23rd.

is now available to our customers for download on LCS, Customer and Partner source. Cumulative Update 8 build number is 6.2.2000.14. You must have Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R2 installed or Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R2 to apply this cumulative update. For installation instructions, download the Installation guide for cumulative update 8 for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R2

The release notes is another great place to start with Cumulative Update 8 for Microsoft Dynamics Ax 2012 R2 deployment.

To learn about known issues in cumulative update 8, log into LCS by using CustomerSource or PartnerSource account. Then, in the Issue search box, enter “CU8 known issue” as the query for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R2.

The mobile app provides the opportunity to use existing iOS, Android and Windows mobile devices to track assets, making the task easier and more cost effective. RAM’s asset tracking software allows you to perform regular audits and keep a central, up to date asset register at all times.

This solution integrates fully with RAM’s fixed asset accounting module if depreciation is required. There is no need to purchase expensive scanning equipment, just use your existing smart devices!
This app provides an ideal solution where routine asset tracking, physical auditing or the building of a central asset register is required.

Find out how you can:
• Minimise the number of lost assets
• Improve asset utilisation and reduce costs
• Quickly build a central asset register
• Keep an up to date asset register for insurance purposes
• Manage the issue and return of items
• Record asset lending
• Flag items as transferred, located or missing
• Upload audited data to a central asset register

The analysis focuses on the potential implications of regulation for business models after the financial crisis and the likely first-round affects of the new banking regulations during the transition period during which the new rules have to be implemented. These potential implications of the regulatory changes were assessed in a qualitative manner using supervisory expert judgement and the assessment. is not mean to be an impact assessment of regulation, neither does it evaluate the long-term benefits of regulation for the economy. The report also provides a matrix giving supervisors an overview of the global trends that might affect banks’ business models following the implementation of the new regulatory framework.

The analysis shows that there are significant potential implications of the new regulatory measures for certain components of banks’ business models. There is likely to be pressure on the future profitability and the returns of the banking sector as it changes to meet the new requirements.

The complexity and costs of managing the change in the regulatory environment will be high and some banks will need to develop new business models, which will be successful once the regulatory framework is finally in place. The other important aspect of changes in banks’ business models are the potential implications for lending to the real economy as banks ascertain which areas of lending are the most favourable.

Changes in a bank’s business model is also likely that aspects of lending will move to the shadow banking sector. Non-traditional banking institutions will start to participate in markets that ‘traditional’ banks, either for reasons of profitability or complexity, decide to leave. This trend is already evident in the increasing role that private equity firms and hedge funds are playing in the commercial real estate segment in some countries.

There is also cross-sector interplay/ Insurance firms have started to participate in areas of lending/financing, leading to some overlap with the banking industry. As a result of measures taken by various NSAs it is also likely that banks will re-consider the markets in which they wish to be involved and the way in which they themselves are organised.

There is need for further work to explore the impact on banks ‘counterparties and to support the analysis using a more quantitative approach based on existing internal and industry impact assessments. A quantitative assessment will be challenging given that some of the regulatory rules have not yet been finalised and there are few studies that consolidate the various effects of regulatory changes.

In today’s changing economic environment, finance is critical to ensuring the growth of the business while controlling risk and optimizing efficiency.

Microsoft Dynamics Ax implemented by Synergy’s industry qualified and experienced financial consultants helps organizations to harness technology to gain better business insights. Turn Financial data into actionable business information to plan, control and transform the business and increase productivity. Watch this video to learn how Microsoft Dynamics AX can help finance leaders to reimagine

As business environments become increasingly complex and competitive, resources need to be managed efficiently and effectively. Watch this video to learn how the planning, budgeting, forecasting and control capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics AX can help organizations monitor and optimize business results and improve the ability to manage corporate strategy.

There has never been such an abundance of available and useful information to organizations. They ave access to mountains of data inside the corporation as well as across the web. Your people need the right tools to analyse your company’s data, to accelerate decision making and drive your business in real time. Watch this video to learn how Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 and Power BI can help you explore and discover your data so you can accelerate your insights, and deliver amazing experiences.

This is a Microsoft video showing Management Reporter 2012 in a real-world example workflow. Management Reporter is the Dynamics ERP application used for the creation, distribution and analysis of financial statements. Management Reporter empowers decision makers to provide real-time insights into organizational results allowing you to take action and align employee behavior with overall goals. The 2012 version is shown here.

Synergy is a well established, solution provider across the Middle East region.
Synergy has a strong presence in several key verticals; Manufacturing, Construction, Hospitality Insurance, Financial Services, Government. Media, Oil and Gas, Distribution.
Synergy is particularly well known as a Gold Partner of both Infor Sunsystems, and Microsoft Dynamics Ax and for its implementation expertise and exceptional support. It is based centrally in Dubai in the Karama district since it was registered in 1991, and occupies a 7,000 sq ft office with around 80 full time employees.